Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.

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When your child asks about what we believe, and why we believe it…answer.
While ambiguous “Christ-centeredness” by its very nature fragments Christianity by way of its subjectivism, Christological commitments beget unity or, at least, move strongly in that direction.
The Word seems like it is so little, like five barley loaves and two small fish, but it is all that God used to create the heavens and the earth.
Bitterness took root when he began approaching the Word merely as a burden he was called to carry rather than a balm that his soul needed, too.
The “mystery of faith” entails the article of faith: Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and, finally, his Parousia.
Protestants, in my view, don’t suffer from a Goldilocks problem. They have an arrogance problem.
Why reflect on these three men — MacArthur, Ozzy, and Hulk Hogan — in the same breath?
The Solas are not just doctrinal statements. They are the grammar of Christian comfort.
Chapter 3 of Habakkuk, which is often referred to as “the Psalm of Habakkuk,” is a song of catharsis, relief, faith, and profound emotion.
Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
This is the third installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”
This is the second installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”